in her net

I’ve got a confession to make: I love the internet. I absolutely do. It’s the greatest thing ever. I don’t know what I’d do without it. Really, I don’t. There’s just so many things that are possible with it: communication, entertainment, purchases, music, the list goes on. Here are a few things I love about it.

Communication. Things like facebook and MSN messenger are great. You’re able to communicate with people around the world. Distance is no longer an obstacle. Don’t forget about e-mail and blogs as well. Simply awesome. I’ll admit, I hated facebook when it first came out. I joined initially because a friend told me it was great. Truth be told, it sucked when I first joined. There were only 3 Canadian universities on facebook when I first joined and no features. Except poking, the most useless facebook function ever. No photos, no videos, no cool apps. It was basically an online popularity contest. But I have to admit, over time, facebook has become an excellent communication tool. Catch with old friends you haven’t seen in years, plan events and parties easily, share your pictures and videos with friends effortlessly. Good stuff.

Purchases. Get anything and everything from the internet. No longer are you bound to buying what’s close by. If you can find it on the net, you can buy. How very convenient! I especially love buying a lot of my music online now through iTunes. I’ll still buy CDs whenever I find a good deal, but iTunes is great. Not only is it cheaper, but often times, if I pre-order, I get bonus tracks that aren’t released on the CDs. Sweet!

Entertainment. With sites like youtube, how can you go wrong for entertaining yourself. Who know how many countless hours I’ve spent watching stuff on there. I love it. Not only can you entertain yourself, but you can also discover new things. One thing I never thought I’d use the internet for is discovering new music talents. I’ve always found out about new artists through the radio and friends. But now I’m discovering cool artists by just browsing the net. My personal favourite right now is Jennifer Chung. A sweet girl from Cali with an amazing voice and songwriting skills to match. Here’s my favourite song of hers:

Speaking of entertainment, check out Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. Joss Whedon + Neil Patrick Harris + comedy + musical = awesomeness. Seriously, check it out, you won’t be disappointed.

Now, unfortunately, it isn’t all good. With all this freedom opened up with the internet, it’s also given voices to people who frankly shouldn’t be talking. Hate groups and hate websites are unfortunately on the net. So are disgusting things like child pornography. I’m pretty sure this stuff only makes up a very small sliver of the internet, but it still saddens/angers me that people would put stuff up like that.

Back to the good stuff. There are many more communication tools that I haven’t mentioned, but there is one I’d like to highlight before I end this post: twitter. For those of you don’t know what twitter is, it’s basically a tool where you can post short messages about what you’re doing at that moment. Friends can subscribe to your feed and be in the know about your doings. It’s suppose to let people know what you’re doing in between blog posts. Now I’ve received a few invites for this over the last few months, but I’m still skeptical, seems like it’s a pretty thin line between twittering and stalking. Do I really want people knowing what I do on a hourly basis? Do I want to know what others are doing on an hourly basis? I just don’t know. What do you think?